I am here in the house of your cousin, Dr. Stahl, who seems to
have grown longer and leaner than ever. He is a mere shadow.
It is here that your letter reaches me. You tell me to write
to you about myself. To-day, the 15th of October, 1903, I am
twenty-four years old. What gift will Destiny give me for my
birthday? Love? Wealth? A hero's death?
Your cousin Stahl, in his cavernous voice that seems to come
echoing up from underground, says that the gift of Destiny is
precisely these four-and-twenty years of mine! Perhaps he is
right. I feel them eddying in my blood like four-and-twenty
cyclones.
The world is a whirlwind of youth.
Kaufmann this morning lent me his sorrel stallion--the finest
horse in the Empire--and I had a gallop along the bastions. All
the women looked at me. In a phaeton I saw the brazen and
beautiful Princess Theodora, blonde and torrid as a Mexican
landscape. She was resplendent in amethyst and heliotrope, her
red locks flaming to the sun; no one but a princess would
permit herself to display such a riot of violent colors.
Soon afterwards I saw Vera Voroklizkaja, reclining in her
carriage, aloof and severe as a vestal virgin; her glossy
black tresses parted over her brow enclosed the narrow oval of
her face like soft black wings. Beside her sat little Miriam
Grey, clothed in her youthfulness as in an armor of roses. The
beauty of all these women courses through my blood like sun
and wine.
Upon my word life is an excellent institution.
And you--what are you doing?
Ever yours,